Nursery rhymes and written phonics used in a meaningful context are valuable teaching methods which can be applied in a whole language classroom or in conjunction with a basal reading program. Because nursery rhymes are rooted in oral tradition they lend themselves to oral presentation. They provide forms for the oral beginnings of the best of linguistic skills. Children can easily memorize the rhymes and act them out for the class. The rhymes can then be written down and used as reading material for the students. A simple cut-and-paste activity can help children learn phonics. Each phoneme is named and defined as it is introduced. The children then look through magazines to find examples of the phoneme they just learned and explain what they see in the picture and how they hear the sound in the topic, and they can attach a name to their picture. The contributions are then collected and the entire class reviews the pictures and the corresponding phonemes. The materials used in these activities are at hand and are inexpensive. (RS)